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IBM Suspended From US Federal Contracts
theodp writes "IBM has been temporarily banned from receiving future contracts with federal agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed on Monday. The suspension went into effect last Thursday due to 'concerns raised about potential activities involving an EPA procurement,' the agency said in an e-mailed statement. Under a reciprocal agreement among federal agencies, when one issues a ban, the others follow it. The EPA said it will not comment further on the matter. An IBM spokesman said he had no immediate comment. 'You don't see this very often, particularly for large companies,' commented a stunned industry analyst, mentioning a bankrupt MCI as a notable exception. IBM earned an estimated $1.5 billion in revenue from federal prime contracts in fiscal 2007."
Don't click on the above link, page contains Virus! (This is _not_ a joke!)
Apparently, Slashdot is skipping April Fools this year, along with the rest of the U.S. Details later today, hopefully.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I don't think this is a Apr 1 joke... http://www.epls.gov/epls/search.do?debar_recid=98050&status=current&vindex=0&xref=true Unless it's a really elaborate .gov joke...
Mike Pacific
Lots of slashdotters bitch about tags. But today, tags are your friend. Today, I'm looking for the tags omgponies and aprilfools to know if stories are hoaxes, and !omgponies and !aprilfools to know if they are real.
Now, this story was just tagged !omgponies, but that tag is gone now. Ugh.
Just do a search in Google news for IBM and you'll find the story. Looks legit to me, although the Register clearly has an April Fools story that Robert Scobe is an IBM construction with 1TB of memory.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Or if you're a haxxor, fix slashdot. I want my pink ponies!
OMG.
Nobody ever got fired for......
Well crap.
I suspect that this isn't an April Fool's joke as it is mentioned on the NYSE site here
Posting a story like that would be a sure-fire way to make Big Blue's stock drop like a hot rock, and you'd have shareholders on your arse faster than GNAA members at an orgy.
If the SEC thought it had been done with the intent of manipulating the market for gain, though, you'd be wishing that it was just shareholders and the GNAA after your arse. Coz there'd be a strong likelihood that your arse would become property of Bubba.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
That's the joke.
Don't quote me on this.
Won't someone please think of the ponies? :(
/.ers:
The timing is curious but I can assure you this is not a joke. I work as a contractor for DHS and the word came down yesterday. We said the same thing - you're kidding, right? - but it turned out to be a very real order.
I don't know how IBM is about delivering on contracts themselves, but we as a contractor (in conjunction with the government program managers) use IBM commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software extensively. Since the DHS reciprocal ban includes purchase orders, this really throws a wrench in our works. We are looking at the possibility of switching a 500+ head software development shop from IBM-Rational to...something else, by the end of the year when our maintenance runs out. Another project I work with was just evaluating and beginning development with WebSphere, and they are going to completely lose momentum.
I am sure other agencies are doing the same as far as the extent of implementation of the ban. This might be good for the taxpayers in the long run, but right now it is causing a lot of billable hours to be spent scrambling, so I sure hope it's worth it, EPA.
I work for the professional services arm of one of IBM's direct competitors.
Trust me - they are all trainwrecks-for-hire.
So, what appallingly illegal and unconstitutional thing did the government ask IBM to do?
Considering what Haliburton has done (and been caught/fined for) and yet is still chugging along without a hitch, what did IBM have to do to get suspended altogether?
You know the world is going to crap when slashdot readers blindly click on links without looking at the URL they are headed for.